Tuesday, 6 December 2011

I can still remember the day the final Transformers UK issue came out. Getting to the end of the issue to discover that that was it, the end. No more. Imagine my surprise 21 years later when I heard that they would be continuing the book I grew up on, with the writer and the penciller AND the inker that worked on that defining book. Imagine my even greater surprise when I learned that I would be the one working with them on colouring the interiors!

Its no understatement to say that I look up to the Simon Furman (writer), Andy Wildman (penciller) and Stephen Baskerville (inker) as it was Furman's run on the book that made we want to tell my own stories and I think of the countless hours I's spend trying to copy and/or trace the artwork from those books, only to discover that I wasn't very good at drawing! What they did has stuck with me, and has stood the test of time well, and to be in the same company as these gentlemen is nothing short of an honour.

Chris Ryall put this page up earlier so its now safe for me to show too. Needless to say getting the feel of this book right is a priority for everybody, and with that wonderful classic pencil and inkwork its hard to deviate too far from the classic colour schemes without it looking wrong. Striking a balance is hard as people have such expectations of what a TF book looks like now, and indeed what it looked like then, and great pains have been taken to get a look that fits somewhere in the middle. So when you read the issues you can see the DNA of the original books and yet see the modern era, almost as if this is the "missing link" between those points.

As a huge fan of the original book, all I can say is that from what I've read and what I've seen you are in for a treat like no other. Seriously, the best is yet to come.